A disruptive rebrand spotlighting a not-for-profit's preventative mission
As a global charity dedicated to bringing an end to human trafficking, Stop The Traffik had succeeded in helping millions of people around the world in its past two decades. After operating under the radar for much of that time, Stop The Traffik needed new brand identity, bringing the charity into the spotlight, grabbing attention and reflecting its primary activities of prevention and intelligence gathering. Our approach was to find a new unabashedly striking branding device positioned at the heart of the brand system. Iconic enough to be a universal symbol of the organisation's core mission; preventing trafficking before it happens and an adaptive device that could underpin their many projects, partners, campaigns and products.
We created the ‘Stop Arrow’ which acts to represent the importance of prevention and strays from the common upward or forward direction arrows used in branding, by pointing backwards. This provides a memorable distinction to a common visual trope by focusing on the ‘before’, not the ‘after’.
Our Stop Arrow replaces the original symbol – a distressed handprint – with an avatar appearing at its centre; in doing so it continues to affirm that people are behind everything the organisation does but is also suggestive of their more modern, data-driven approach to tackling the issue.
The symbol combines with an immersive visual toolkit including a sub-branding system, modern typographic voice, refreshed colour palette and a human-centred collage-style illustration attitude – allowing the organisation to tackle even the most complicated or sensitive subject matter in a distinctive way.
